


There Beneath

by spectreshepard



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, prompt fills always end in fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 16:30:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21413218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectreshepard/pseuds/spectreshepard
Summary: "There beneath the willow tree,I learned a lot about the way of things."Prompt fill - Frost + Winter. The Nein are beginning to make tracks through Caleb's homeland, and memory has a funny way of taking hold.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 2
Kudos: 61





	There Beneath

There beneath the oak and its canopy, Caleb remembers wildflowers used to grow. In the dim light of winter, the Zemni Fields would sink into a grey and muddy existence with its people clinging onto the last of the summer crops, staving off the inevitable gnaw of hunger in the coldest days. Caleb certainly remembers the cold – relentless and insidious, no matter what you wore, it would find its way into your skin and bones with a hunger that felt ancient. He’d wondered if the mages of old had left their mark in more ways than one on these fields, but the thought never stayed long.

“Aw, _dammit!_” A thick squelch sounds from behind and Caleb spares a glance behind him to Beau, the source of the complaint. She’s wrenching her sodden boot from a thick patch of mud, hand clasped at Jester’s wrist while she pulls and pulls, and Nott’s laughter sprouts vibrant green through the mud-strewn landscape. Caleb smiles, faintly, but slows to a halt while he waits for Beau to free herself. He would not be much help, he thinks.

“You didn’t give us the run-down on how shitty the terrain is, huh, Caleb?” Beau shouts to him with a grunt as she finally pulls her boot free, stumbling halfway into Fjord and Jester in the process.

“You just have to look where you are going, Beauregard.” Caleb responds flatly, the answer obvious to him. He’s been careful with his footing, and wrongly assumed the others would do the same. Is muddy ground not an universal menace? He quirks an eyebrow for a moment, smile lingering longer this time.

“Caleb,” Fjord calls, “You think it’s safe to camp here?” he gestures to the small clearing ahead of them, nestled in the space by the old oak. Caleb hesitates, keenly aware that the lines are beginning to ever so slowly cross over between his old life and the now that he knows, and is familiar with. He does not want to see those lines tangled. His smile turns to a grimace, but he nods, eventually.

“Ja. There is not much around here, I think we will be safe. I will put the dome up regardless.” Caleb assures them, and the hesitation drifts away on a cold breeze. A hungry, cold, ancient breeze. Beau picks up the pace without a second thought towards the clearing, and Caduceus seems delighted at the prospect of resting by an old oak for the night as Caleb points the way. He quickly follows in Fjord’s footsteps - leaving Caleb behind with Jester and Nott, the moonlight peeking through the clouds to illuminate the frost and lingering snow along their way. Nott takes off after a sip from her flask, “For warmth!” she says hastily to Caleb in passing - he only nods, not interested in bargaining with her demons tonight while his own lurk in almost every shadow of this meadow.

Glancing skywards, the moonbeam drifts fingers of light gently over his face like a soothing mother, asking after his troubles. Caleb voices none, and is content to let her recede into the clouds without an answer. The cold is everywhere - at his fingers, even blackened as they are with the residual heat of his magic, it bites with the same relentless tenacity as it did when he was a boy, scouring this very field for flowers to gift to his mother. For a moment, the breeze turns warm as he remembers the touch of her hands taking his poorly assembled bouquet from his own, and then it is gone – revealing, Caleb realizes with a faint flinch, a cold hand tucking a bluebell behind his ear.

“Jester?” Caleb freezes, spotting the freckled blue skin out of his peripheral, fiddling with something. His hair is brushed aside quickly and gently, and he feels another flower stalk being added to the existing bluebell.

“They look so pretty on you, Cayleb!” Jester steps away and into Caleb’s line of sight to admire her work, toothy grin radiant in the dim glow of dusk on the meadow. Caleb blinks, uncertain, but a slow smile tugs at his lips before he can assume another, less vulnerable expression. It’s Jester. He can live with that.

“Oh… I think they would suit you far better than I, Jester.” Caleb sighs, watching as Jester slowly blinks up at him with a curious look - a look he’s slowly learning - and it’s but a moment before she tilts her head and smiles, a question waiting.

“What colours should I pick for me? I gave you blue, because, you know, I think blue suits you very well. You have such blue eyes, do you know that, Cayleb?”

“…They are just blue.” Caleb answers the wrong question at first, frowning, eyes torn away by old habit. They are quickly pulled back by the promise of new ones that he’d like to keep, and he is reminded why when Jester grins, holding her hands out as if ready to go and find whatever flower he suggested. He thinks, delving beyond his carefully constructed boundaries of old and new to find just the right flower for her. “_Die Narzissen_… narcissus, ah… a daffodil. Here in the Fields, they grow darker, more orange. It will suit you.”

“That sounds _beautiful!_” Jester leaves no more room for waiting, and takes his hands to lead him off on a merry hunt. “They will stand out amongst all this frost and mud, we’ll find them easily, won’t we?”

Caleb lets himself be led, and smiles once more, even when Jester cannot see. “Oh, ja. They stand out from the rest. A beautiful flower, often overlooked. My mother’s favourite.”


End file.
